Almost
a year ago we started building a set of Mono bindings for
building native MacOS X applications.

Our original goals were modest: bind enough of AppKit that
you could build native desktop applications for OSX using C#
or your favorite .NET language. We leveraged a lot of the
code that we built for MonoTouch our binding to the CocoaTouch
APIs.

During the year, the project picked up steam, we got plenty
of contributions to MonoMac and grew beyond the original
conservative goals.

Integrated the MonoDoc system into MonoDevelop, to
provide developers with documentation on the flight as
they type their code. Detailed method information,
parameter use and type information is available as you
type your code in unobtrusive windows.

Created
a packager that turns your programs into
self-contained OSX Packages with no external
dependencies on Mono and can be deployed to the Apple
App Store.

Created a linker that lets you strip out any
functionality your application might not need to
reduce your executable size.

In addition to that,
MonoMac bundles
a modified version of the
amazing OpenTK 1.0. We
took the liberty (and by "we" I mean, the amazing Kenneth
Pouncey) of fine-tuning the implementation for MonoMac use.

Getting MonoMac 1.0

If you already have MonoDevelop installed, just update your
MonoMac Add-In. If you do not have MonoDevelop installed,
follow
our friendly
instructions.

Contributors

MonoMac would not have been possible without the help of
our great contributors, this is the team:

Next Steps

What is great about doing a 1.0 release is that you know
that there will be a 1.1 release, and a 1.2 release and a 2.0
release.

This is our way of saying "thank you for waiting" and
giving our users a chance to start building applications,
knowing that we have battle tested MonoMac and it is being
used in our own products now [1].

We obviously will continue improving the API, adding more
frameworks as time goes by, but we will also be working with
other communities to expand MonoDevelop's language support,
create more templates for languages like F#, IronRuby,
IronPython and UnityScript.

Although we have a great start for documentation, we hope
that contributors will take advantage of a new web-based wiki
and collaboration tool that we are building to improve the
docs and help us make MonoMac's documentation the best.

Hopefully, we will also get more samples contributed to
MonoMac and we will see a new wave of tutorials and we will
see fascinating discussions on how to build better software
while enjoying every second of it.

[1] (MonoDevelop 2.6 will be using
MonoMac for its native dialog boxes).